Transcultural adaptation of the Emotion Matching Task: an emotion neuropsychological assessment

Emotions play a central role in children’s relationships. Deficits in emotional understanding have been associated with several neuropsychiatric disorders. In Brazil, however, few psychological instruments are available to assess young children’s emotional development. The objective of the present study was to make a transcultural adaptation of the Emotion Matching Task (EMT). The EMT was translated and adapted by a team of bilingual researches and then back-translated to English. The preliminary versions were assessed by EMT’s authors and by Brazilians specialized judges. The final version was applied in a sample of 50 children between three and six years of age and answered by nine judges in three Brazilian states. The results indicate good semantic equivalence and good agreement with the answers provided (κ= 0.88, Z=95.2, p<0.001). The final version of the EMT was considered appropriate and satisfactory

Egg.tually: a healthy lifestyle guide for youngsters

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Urbanization and species occupancy frequency distribution patterns in core zone areas of European towns

More and more of the globe is becoming urbanized. Thus, characterizing the distribution and abundance of species&nbsp;occupying different towns is critically important. The primary aim of this study was to examine the effect of&nbsp;urbanization and latitude on the patterns of species occupancy frequency distribution (SOFD) in urban core zones&nbsp;of European towns (38 towns) along a 3850-km latitudinal gradient. We determined which of the three most&nbsp;common distributional models (unimodal-satellite dominant, bimodal symmetrical, and bimodal asymmetrical)&nbsp;provides the best fit for urban bird communities using the AICc-model selection procedure. Our pooled data&nbsp;exhibited a unimodal-satellite SOFD pattern. This result is inconsistent with the results from previous studies&nbsp;that have been conducted in more natural habitats, where data have mostly exhibited a bimodal SOFD pattern.&nbsp;Large-sized towns exhibited a bimodal symmetric pattern, whereas smaller-sized towns followed a unimodal-satellite dominated SOFD pattern. The difference in environmental diversity is the most plausible explanation&nbsp;for this observation because habitat diversity of the study plots decreased as urbanization increased. Southern&nbsp;towns exhibited unimodal satellite SOFD patterns, central European towns exhibited bimodal symmetric, and&nbsp;northern towns exhibited bimodal asymmetric SOFD patterns. One explanation for this observation is that&nbsp;urbanization is a more recent phenomenon in the north than in the south. Therefore, more satellite species&nbsp;are found in northern towns than in southern towns. We found that core species in European towns are widely&nbsp;distributed, and their regional population sizes are large. Our results indicated that earlier urbanized species are&nbsp;more common in towns than the species that have urbanized later. We concluded that both the traits of bird&nbsp;species and characteristics of towns modified the SOFD patterns of urban-breeding birds. In the future, it would&nbsp;be interesting to study how the urban history impacts SOFD patterns and if the SOFD patterns of wintering and&nbsp;breeding assemblages are the same

Managing leaf-cutting ants: peculiarities, trends and challenges

Leaf-cutting ants are generally recognized as important pest species in Neotropical America. They are eusocial insects that exhibit social organization, foraging, fungus-cultivation, hygiene and a complex nest structure, which render their management notoriously difficult. A lack of economic thresholds and sampling plans focused on the main pest species preclude the management of leaf-cutting ants; such management would facilitate their control and lessen insecticide overuse, particularly the use of insecticidal baits. Recent restrictions on the use of synthetic compounds for such purposes impose additional challenges for the management of leaf-cutting ants. Considerable effort has been exerted regarding these challenges, which are addressed herein, but which also remain challenges that are yet to be conquered